


Such views to make little things of

by rightfullymine



Category: The Resident (TV 2018)
Genre: A Bit of Fluff, F/M, a bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28657233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rightfullymine/pseuds/rightfullymine
Summary: Nic thinks about her sister, about that sea of love. Jessie would never say cheesy bullshit like that if she were here with her. What a ridiculous dream.
Relationships: Conrad Hawkins/Nicolette Nevin
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22





	Such views to make little things of

**Author's Note:**

> In truth, I don't know the first thing about medicine. All medical terms are used arbitrarily.

She turns around abruptly in the tall grass to find Jessie lying beside her, her eyes bright, the dark circles Nic remembers around them all but disappeared, her mouth stretched in a smile she’s missed painfully.

The field they’re lying in is rocked by a timid wind, and the flowers around them don’t smell like flowers at all. Instead, it’s the smell of her sister’s skin that floods her nostrils, and the scent of that fabric softener their mother used a lifetime ago, back when they were young things, and didn’t know how to operate a washing machine or how to define loss.

Jessie shifts on her side to look intently at her, a hand reaching out to squeeze one of Nic’s own, the contrast between her sister’s warm skin and her freezing fingers sends a shiver down her neck.

“What are you so afraid of?” is her sister’s whispered question.

Nic has a thousand answers to that. Of what could happen, of the look in his eyes, of herself. Of this heat she feels in her chest, threatening to burst at any moment. Of hope.

“I…,” she tries to get out, but the words get stuck on her teeth, and her eyes fill instead with hot tears.

Jessie shushes her, her hand moving to Nic’s hair, stroking tenderly.

“Beyond that cliff of fear,” she starts, “there is a sea of love.” And her smile is wet from the tears Nic’s crying. “You will be brave, Nic. Won’t you?”

Nic wakes with a start, sitting up abruptly in bed, the dream crushing against the reality of her surroundings like waves on the reef. Her t-shirt is drenched in sweat, vomit in her mouth. She runs to the downstair bathroom, their en-suite useless if she hopes to keep Conrad asleep, no worried eyes, no questions that have no answers.

After she’s done throwing up, she leans her head against the wall, wipes a hand over her wet face, from her dream or her saliva, she’s not sure anymore. The tiles on the floor are freezing against her exhausted body and she finds it a relief more than anything.

She closes her eyes, moves her hand under the fabric of her t-shirt, rests it on the flat expanse of her stomach. She breathes. She counts in her mind how many days she’s been late now, like she did last night. She is one day later than she was yesterday.

She wasn’t expecting this to happen. She pushes her fingers through her hair to disentangle the knots there as well as her thoughts. She makes a list in her mind: they have the space in the house, and the money in the bank and the warmth of their love. They also have the scars, and the fear and that New Year’s Day so vivid in their minds it’s like it was yesterday. Can they keep their heads above the water?

Nic thinks about her sister, about that sea of love. Jessie would never say cheesy bullshit like that if she were here with her. What a ridiculous dream.

One thing dream Jessie got right, though, it is time for her to be brave.

***

She wakes up again some time later, five minutes before her 5 o’clock alarm. Her body is so attuned to the rhythm of her job she sometimes wonders why she still bothers setting the alarm.

She turns around to find Conrad lying sprawled on his back, naked chest rising and falling steadily with the certainty of his breath, one arm stretched out in her direction, almost touching her.

The five minutes of semi-consciousness until the merciless sound of the alarm is a sacred time she always spends with him. Sometimes it’s his arm around her middle squeezing her into his chest. Other times it’s her cheek pressed against the black words on his turned back, the sound of his heartbeat filling her head like something she cannot stop thinking about.

Today it’s her eyes tracing the lines on his face, his neck, his shoulders, her hands yearning to sink into his hair, but stopping lest he wakes up. He was not there when she went to bed last light, monthly drinks with Marshall keeping him out late on a weekday, so he missed her close encounter with the toilet before she turned in and she missed his gentle snores lulling her to instant sleep.

“I can feel you staring.” He doesn’t even open his eyes, his lips breaking into the dawn of a smirk, deep voice doing maddening things to her belly, her cheeks heating on their own volition, after _years_.

“I can’t help it, you’re so handsome.” She whispers in return, her voice coming out breathier than intended. She wants to put it down to all the retching she engaged in last night and again this morning, but she knows it’s more how stupidly in love she is, how that fact has a knack for sneaking up on her when she least expects it.

He smiles fully now, and it is a beautiful thing, made for her mornings only, even in the semi-darkness of their bedroom with the threat of the alarm going off any minute now.

She moves closer to him, finally reaches her hands in his hair, caressing. “I’ll see you later at the hospital, yeah?” he murmurs, and she can see by the lines on his face he’s slowly being pulled back to sleep.

She hums her assent, strokes his cheek to send him quicker to sleep. She thinks _I have something to tell you_ , and _maybe_. Not now, though, she needs to be braver for that. She closes her eyes, prays for a sign from the universe.

Conrad places his rough hand against the side of her face, “I love you,” he breathes.

As signs go, she will take this one.

***

She means to find Jessica as soon as she gets to Chastain but she is swept up by the flurry of hospital activity and all thoughts of that morning are pushed to the side, as they usually are whenever she starts a shift.

One of her patients in the ICU, a young man that was in a terrible car crash and has no one to hold his hand, coded right as she was stepping foot on her floor and by the time that situation is handled, she’s sweated through her second t-shirt of the day and is feeling slightly light-headed. She stops by the nurses’ station, grabs a granola bar and a bottle of water and makes quick work of consuming both. She thinks about starting an IV but then she spots Jessica and quickly gets up to reach her.

“Hey, there beaut-” Jessica doesn’t have time to finish her sentence before Nic grabs her by the sleeve of her scrubs and drags her down the hallway to Conrad’s office. She takes the keys from her coat’s pocket and quickly ushers Jessica in through the door.

“Good morning to you too!” Jessica laughs, “why are we in Conrad’s office” she asks, perching an arm on her hip, “without Conrad?”

Her smile fades when she sees the look on Nic’s face. “Is everything okay, Nic?”

Nic combs a hand through her hair, asks herself the same question and is not sure of the answer yet.

“I need you to do me a favour,” she starts, ignoring her friend’s question, “I need you to do a blood draw for me.”

“Sure, which patient?”

“Myself.”

Jessica pauses at that. Nic can read her thoughts as if they’re written on her face, her effort to keep calm, her tight grip on her mind to keep it from spiralling.

“Okay,” deep breath, “what am I looking for?”

“Beta hCG,” answers Nic without missing a beat, clinical and detached as if she was talking about a random woman in the ER.

Jess’s eyes widen. She opens her mouth too, only to close it seconds after, not sure what to say.

“Are you...?” It looks like she can’t avoid the obvious question.

“I think so, I don’t know. Maybe.” Nic is quick to reply, killing that word in the bud, before it has a chance to manifest in the air around them, to become real.

“Yeah?” and Jessica’s voice comes out incredulous and teary, because she’s unaware of the wreckage that word left in Nic’s life when it was spoken. “How are you feeling?”

Against all odds, Nic finds herself laughing. It’s a wet laugh, though, mixed with the tears she’s not shed yet, gathered in her throat in wait. “I don’t know, I…, I have no answers today, I…”

And Jessica gets her instantly. “Shhhh, it’s okay, you don’t need to say anything, I understand.” She envelops her in her arms. Nic welcomes the hug, rests her head on Jessica’s shoulder, thinks she can’t possibly understand the shivers down her spine, but thanks the gods for the warm body keeping her upright at the moment anyway.

“Here, have a seat.” She leads her to the couch against the wall, goes to prep Nic’s arm to draw blood. “Does Conrad know?”

Nic shakes her head. “I want to be sure before I tell him.”

Jess squeezes her arm. Nic puts her other hand of top of Jess’s and squeezes in turn.

She closes her eyes while Jessica goes to work. Safe in the dark behind her eyelids she allows herself to entertain the idea of the life possibly growing inside of her, sends a prayer that her body will keep it safe this time, bans memories of a painful past.

She doesn’t realize Jess is done with the blood sample until her friend’s unexpectedly shy voice draws her away from her thoughts.

“But Nic, if it’s true, it’s a good thing, right?”

Nic looks at her arm, at the place the needle has just left. She thinks about Conrad’s words this morning, about the heat trapped in her chest. Then she smiles. This time, dry and real.

“It’s the best thing.”

***

Jessica tells her the blood results will not be back before the end of her shift, so she rolls down the sleeve of her coat, drinks a whole bottle of orange juice to be on the safe side and gets on with her work.

She sees Conrad for the first time in the hospital that day outside a new patient’s room. He and Mina are waiting for her by the door before they enter together and make the usual introduction of the medical team that will take care of the patient.

As she approaches them, he tilts his head and gives her a sort of look she’s very familiar with, a look that lets her know he knows something is amiss.

“What do we have here?” she asks them before he has a chance to say anything. She keeps her attention on Mina but feels his gaze boring into the side of her head. He is not one to back from a thorny confrontation, so he waits for Mina to finish her briefing on the patient and start going into the room to reach an arm around her waist, drawing her into him for a second.

“Are you okay?” he whispers against her hair.

The scent of his skin brings desperate tears to her eyes, the waves of comfort his presence alone offers threatening to throw her composure out of the window.

“Yeah, just a bit tired.” She goes for a semi-truth to keep him off her back. He keeps looking at her, trying to verify the truth of her words through the evidence of his eyes. He doesn’t seem satisfied by what he finds but brushes his lips against her cheek and lets her go for the moment.

Inside the room, Mina does the honours, “Hello ma’am, I am doctor Mina Okafor, these are my colleagues doctor Hawkins and nurse practitioner Nevin. We’ll be taking care of you.”

Nic quickly realizes she could have just bothered with Conrad’s name because he’s all the lady on the bed and what she believes is her mother by her side have eyes for. God, not another of _those_ patients. She doesn’t think she can stand them today.

While Conrad and Mina explain why the lady, Clare, has been admitted and what tests they are going to run to find out what’s wrong with her, Nic busies herself with the machinery by her side, going to start an IV on her arm, and trying to distract herself from the dreamy looks _both_ mother and daughter are throwing the only man in the room.

The second a page gets Conrad out of the room, the two start gushing obnoxiously. “Oh my lord, are all the doctors in this hospital this fine?” asks the mother, fanning her face. Nic doesn’t look up from the needle on her patient’s arm but she swears she hears Mina stifling a snicker.

“I would have found something wrong with me soone- Ouch!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” comes Nic’s very weak apology. The woman on the bed doesn’t even spare her a glance and Nic’s glad because if she had been more alert to her surroundings, she wouldn’t have missed the cardio surgeon turning around, no doubt to hide her face.

“D’you think he’s married, mom?”

Nic’s heard enough. “Okay, I will be back in a short while to take you to radiology. For now, try and relax”. She forces an overly sweet smile on her lips and goes to join Mina to leave together.

The patient gives her a disinterested nod before diving right back in. Her mother following closely.

“Not with those looks he’s not. Have you seen those tattoos, Clare?”

Nic is not lucky enough to have fled the room in time to have missed that question, and the second Mina closes the door behind her, she can’t help but tease, “yeah Nic, have you seen those tattoos?” winking her eyes in a very un-Mina fashion.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” is Nic’s frustrated reply, “I want to be reassigned.”

“And leave me to deal with Conrad’s fan club all by my lonesome? I don’t think so.”

“Urgh!” Nic huffs, “why do those patients happen to me.”

“It’s clear you’ve made some questionable choices in your past.”

“Haha, very funny!” but Nic laughs in spite of herself. It’s good to find pockets of normalcy in crazy days like this one.

“And what did she mean he can’t be married if he looks like that?” she asks her friend thinking back to that conversation in the room.

Mina’s loud laughter follows her to her next patient’s room.

***

The rest of her day is busy as usual. That is to say, extremely busy. She visits all of her assigned patients and needs to throw up only once in hours, so she counts that as a victory.

Jess sneaks candy and sugary drinks in her pockets whenever she passes her in the corridors and she wants to be annoyed but she eats and drinks everything she is offered.

At one point, Devon finds her, and by the look in his eyes she knows it’s nothing good. There’s a young oncology patient, he explains, and he cares very much. He knows Nic doesn’t do that anymore, but could she please be his chemo nurse just for today, to administer his first round of chemo. He knows her answer before she even opens her mouth.

When she gets to the patient’s room, she is surprised to find Conrad inside, sitting on the chair by the boy’s bed. She doesn’t go in just yet.

She can’t hear what he is saying but she can see the boy’s face, tears wetting the fringe by his eyes, relief and fear taking turns to pull his mouth in heart-breaking grimaces.

Conrad grips his hand tightly and keeps speaking to him. The boy nods in distress but closes his fist around Conrad’s anyway.

She knows how the boy is feeling because she’s been on the receiving end of Conrad’s comfort a thousand times. How you can feel his strength physically seeping into your skin, his confidence in you making you stand tall and believe in yourself as much as he does.

Nic feels a sudden, shameful, yearning to be in that boy’s shoes, to have Conrad’s hand around her own, his encouragement stopping _her_ tears in their tracks.

She thinks back to what she said to Jess earlier. Why should she wait to be sure when she needs him the most _because_ she is not sure? He promised, too, to be her strength.

She enters the hospital room, introduces herself to the patient then starts the procedure. She shares a look with Conrad before he takes his leave and she whispers to him to wait for her outside.

When she comes out, some time later, she takes his hand and drags him to their utility closet.

The second the door closes behind them he grabs her face between his hands. It’s his body so close to her, the knowledge that he’s aware just by seeing her that she’s not okay, the promise of his comfort so ready to be had that has her losing her composure.

“Nic, what’s wrong?” he’s starting to get agitated himself.

She has a second to look at the face she knows so well, before her tears come and she has to close her eyes against the emotion. He doesn’t press her further but puts his fingers to her cheeks to wipe away her distress, his hands wet against her face.

“I need you,” she whispers brokenly, before putting her hands on top of his and squeezing. She knows the moment she speaks the words, this is the most real, most sincere feeling in her heart. More than fear, more than anguish, she knows that sentence to be true.

“I’m here,” he replies in a breath, kissing their entwined hands on her face, sounding almost frantic now.

“I promise it’s nothing bad,” she manages to get out because she’s taking this chance to let out the heat in her chest, and letting it burn him too in turn. After a beat, she gets greedy and lays her head, tired and heavy, right where his shoulder meets his neck. He holds her there, caresses her hair lovingly, her back, her arms.

When she trusts her voice to not fail her, she takes a step back and looks into his eyes again, braving the blizzard inside her head.

She already knows what his reaction will be, she could describe it in great detail, would win big money if she bet on it. Yet, she realizes now, this has been the heart of her worries all this time, how this moment will change her, _their_ lives forever, how the next lines on his face will shape their relationship from now on.

So she squares her shoulders, doesn’t cower from it. Looks at him as they both would a radiology scan, trying to find what’s wrong.

She uses the word for the first time, too.

“I think I’m pregnant”, the sentence a small miracle.

The first emotion that fleets on his handsome face is surprise, his eyebrows rising ever so slightly, his mouth shaping a disbelieving, delighted O. She sees the million words he wants to say on his tongue, but he swallows them and they stay in the dark. For a tiny second, she takes wild pleasure in knowing she’s the only one in his life who can render him speechless.

He’s thrilled after that. Whispers her name like an inventor would the name of his new, best invention, sounding so sweet and so moved a few tears escape her eyes, late to the party. Finally, his whole face breaks into a tentative, watery smile, a handful of tears getting stuck on the lines at the corner of his eyes.

Incredulous, he presses his forehead against her, breathes her breath. She relaxes then, allows herself to close her eyes and loves him in this moment more than the sum of all the ways she’s loved him until now.

He starts with the medical questions then, serious and almost business-like, because he’s Conrad Hawkins after all, and because he, too, knows heartbreakingly well how fragile this can be, and focusing on what they can test and do can act as a brake on that cliff of fear she’s very familiar with, something to keep them both from falling off the edge. When was her last period, and what symptom has she had, nausea, fatigue? She gives him the answers diligently, like a student who’s studied for an important test.

“You’ve run a blood sample?”, he asks, and she nods her head.

“We’ll get the results later today. I…”, she wants to excuse herself, “wanted to wait to tell you. But I wanted this more.”

“No,” he shushes her, “I’m glad you did. I’d rather be scared together.” 

***

He demands she rest after that. He arranges for some of their colleagues to cover for her claiming that what good is being chief resident if he can’t boss people around, and takes her to his office despite her protests.

Once inside, he leads her to the couch and urges her to lie down. He gets comfortable on the floor next to her, so he can stroke her hair to make her fall asleep quicker.

They are finding words inadequate in this situation, so they settle for looking at each other, touching, feeling their warmth through their skin.

“Are you tired?”, he asks before she can fall asleep.

“Yeah, I feel a bit fatigued,” she closes her eyes, takes one of his hands and brings it under her face with one of her own. “I have eaten and kept hydrated. I have had the usual symptoms, but I feel okay, I don’t feel off in any way…” but she stops there because the next words are too painful to articulate, and he knows them anyway.

She tries again, “If this is real, Conrad, I… I promise I will-“

He doesn’t let her finish, brings his face so close to her on the couch they’re almost kissing, and says, “No, there are no promises for you to make. If this is real, we’ll do it together okay? We’ll laugh and cry and be scared together. Like now, okay?”

“Okay,” she says, because there is no better promise she can make than this one.

***

Later, she spots Jess coming toward the nurses’ station, envelope in hand, when she and Mina are in Clare’s room, the cardio surgeon in the middle of a straightforward if boring explanation of the complex procedure she’s going to perform on the patient in the OR.

“Do you have any questions?”, Mina politely asks when she’s finished.

“Mmm, not really,” Clare clears her throat, throws a look at her mother. “Actually, Doctor Hawkins was here before and he told us he is, in fact, married, so we were wondering, is it really true?”

Mina throws a disbelieving look in Nic’s direction, clearly at the end of her tether, but Nic’s focus is elsewhere and she makes her way across the room and out in seconds, only catching Mina’s exasperated reply of “why don’t you ask your nurse? She’s the one married to him, for god’s sake!”

When Nic reaches Jess, her heart punching her chest like a young kid in a hopeless fight, Conrad is already there, taking the test results from their friend and interlocking his hand with hers before dragging her to his office, for the third time today.

They slip in quietly, looking to the hospital like two random people in love on a random break together.

Inside, she reflexively brings her hair behind her ears, as if getting herself together for a guest, before taking the envelope Conrad is offering her with shaking hands.

She tears through the paper without preamble, leaning into his shoulder so he can read as well. She doesn’t bother with all the numbers on the page, just focuses on the one word she’s looking for.

They slump against the wall and on the floor, after. She takes his arms and brings them around herself, strokes his hair the way he loves, then, when she cannot find good enough words to tell of the explosion inside herself, she presses her lips to his. He pulls her against him and kisses her back roughly, tasting the pints of orange juice she’s had since this morning, her lips bitter and soft on his. He doesn’t stop there, and moves to her cheek, her jaw, her neck, Nic leaning her head against the wall in a heady onslaught of happiness.

“God,” he breathes against her ear, “if I found you irresistible before…”

***

Before leaving Chastain for the day, they take a trip to obstetrics for an ultrasound. The resident who receives them, Conrad’s friend, greets them with a beaming smile and treats Nic with a gentleness she is very grateful for after a day of tired limbs and frayed nerves.

They watch their baby on the screen squeezing each other’s hands painfully, their bodies momentarily forgetting such a natural thing as breathing.

When the doctor activates the sound and they hear the baby’s heartbeat for the first time, Conrad does a poor job of keeping his cool, wiping openly at his eyes, and Nic has a crazy thought, which Conrad doesn’t forget to ask her about later, when she’s brushing her teeth in their bathroom, his hand pressed against her back. He hasn’t stopped touching her one way or another since the envelope.

“It’s a stupid thought.”

“Tell me anyway,” he insists, his gaze on her face in the mirror, his hands wandering dangerously.

“They’d revoke my licence if they knew I thought something like that!” she laughs, and he laughs too because she’s being ridiculous and he loves her.

“How many hearts have we listened to in our jobs?” she turns around in his arms, “probably thousands, right?” And they all sound the same but they all sound a tiny bit different too.”

She takes a breath, he touches his nose to hers and hums to show he’s following.

“But the baby’s heartbeat… it sounded exactly like yours. Conrad, the baby has your heartbeat,” she says in wonder and to her ears it doesn’t sound as crazy as she knows it is.

She catalogues the reaction on his face, storing it in her memory for a rainy day. He tightens his arms around her, breathes the scent of her neck, smiles against it the kind of smile that can bring her to her knees. For the second time that day, she finds him speechless in front of her.

She grins and thinks maybe this is what that sea of love her sister was talking about looks like.

It is a sight to behold.


End file.
